page_title: Leopold Trepper
section_title: Life
hierarchical_section_title: Leopold Trepper / Life
caption_attribution_description: Diagram of the Leopold Trepper Group that was active in Belgium during World War 2 and was part of the Red Orchestra. Kesaris p.8
context_page_description: Leopold Zakharovitch Trepper was a Polish Communist, agent of the Red Army Intelligence, with the code name of Otto and had been working with them since 1930. He was also a resistance fighter and journalist of Jewish descent.
  Trepper along with Soviet military intelligence officer, Richard Sorge were the two main Soviet agents in Europe and were employed as roving agents setting up espionage networks in Europe and Japan. Whereas Richard Sorge was a penetration agent, Trepper ran a series of clandestine cells for organising agents. Trepper used the latest technology, in the form of small wireless radios to communicate with Soviet intelligence. Although the monitoring of the radios transmissions by the Funkabwehr would eventually lead to the organisations destruction, the sophisticated use of the technology enabled the organisation to behave as a network, with the ability to achieve tactical surprise and deliver high-quality intelligence including the warning of Operation Barbarossa.
  In 1936, Trepper became the technical director of a Soviet Red Army Intelligence in western Europe. He was responsible for recruiting agents and creating espionage networks.
context_section_description: On February 23, 1904, Leopold Trepper was born to a large Jewish family of 10 children in Nowy Targ, Poland that was part of Austria-Hungary in that time. His father was a travelling farm machinery and seed merchant, who died when Trepper was almost twelve. His parents sent him to school in Lviv in Ukraine to escape the strong militant and anti-Semitic tradition in Poland. Trepper met Sarah Orschitzer in Lviv, who was working in a chocolate factory and taking evening classes to train as a teacher. She was either the mistress or wife of Trepper and was also a Jewish communist who travelled under the alias Luba Brekson. After school, Trepper moved to Kraków to study history and literature at the Jagiellonian University. His lack of money lead him to left wing student groups. After the October Revolution he joined the Bolsheviks and became a communist.
  After the Polish war with the Soviet Union, Poland suffered an economic crisis and Trepper had to leave university for lack of funds. He found work first as a workshop locksmith, mason and later worked in the mines in Katowice. Two years later in 1926 he moved to Dąbrowa to work as a labourer in a foundry. In 1927, due to the extreme poverty and lack of food, he agitated the workers to strike. As one of the ringleaders he was caught and imprisoned for eight months.
  Finding it impossible to get work after the uprising, Trepper applied for a visa for France but was refused. In the same year, Trepper then joined the Zionist socialist movement Hashomer Hatzair, members of whom helped him to emigrate from Poland to Haifa, Palestine via Brindisi to work on the roads, later in a Kibbutz Sarah Orschitzer followed Trepper to Palestine. She was involved in an illegal communist demonstration, was arrested and jailed. She would have been deported had she not married a Palestinian citizen.
  In 1929 after moving to Tel Aviv, Trepper became a member of the central committee of the Palestine Communist Party. Between 1928 and 1930 Trepper was the organiser of the Eḥud or Unity faction, a Jewish-Arab communist labour organisation within Histadrut trade union body. Most of its members came from the Kerem HaTeimanim area and worked against the British forces in Palestine. In 1929 he attended a meeting of the International Red Aid, when he was identified as an agitator and militant communist by the British, who subsequently arrested and interned him for 15 days at the citadel's prison in Acre, Israel. Trepper organised a hunger strike after learning that the communist prisoners were to be deported. He was released after news of the hunger strike reached London and the British newspapers. Trepper and the hunger strikers were placed on stretchers outside the prison, as by that time they were too weak to walk with lack of food. In March 1930 after given the choice of leaving Palestine or face being forcefully deported to Cyprus. Trepper travelled via Syria to Marseille, France and worked as a dishwasher. Trepper then travelled to Paris where he found work as a decorator living a poor existence. He came into contact with numerous left wing intellectuals and communist workers that eventually led him to become a member of the Rabcors, an illegal political organisation that was dominated by communists who sent both men and intelligence to Moscow. He continued to work for the organisation until French intelligence broke it up in 1932. Trepper escaped by train to Berlin, where he contacted the Soviet embassy. After several days he was ordered to report to Moscow in the spring of 1932. Trepper left Paris on a Polish passport.
  Between 1932 and 1935, Trepper worked to become a GRU agent by learning his trade. He initially attended the Kumns University where he obtained a diploma. Later he studied history at the Institute of Red Professors and awarded a degree, enabling him to work as a teacher. During that period in Moscow, Trepper was in constant touch with the Russian intelligence instructors who taught him the practical skills of an espionage agent. At the same time, Trepper's wife also attended Kumns Univ
caption: Diagram of the Trepper Group in Belgium
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